It was not immediately clear whether the civilian count is in addition to the earlier figures quoted by official Syrian sources, or an updated toll.

Around 60 US Tomahawk cruise missiles hit al Shayrat airbase near Homs in central Syria in the early hours of Friday in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack carried out by the regime on a rebel-held village earlier this week.

At least 80 people died in the incident, in which the Turkish Health Ministry confirmed post mortems showed victims had been exposed to sarin and chlorine gas.

A local man living near al Shayrat told a BBC producer that the blasts from the strike were "massive" and that he believed many civilians living near the airfield could have been killed.

The Pentagon confirmed that members of the Russian armed forces present at the base were given advance warning of the impending military action in order to "minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield,” a statement echoed by the White House, which said that infrastructure rather than people had been the target of the "warning shot" strike.